Genesis 32

life in the bubble

Have you ever felt slapped in the face by a building? You were moving along through life at a nice brisk pace and then, wham, a solid construction that stops you in your tracks, like a gateway Arch welcoming you to cross the Mississippi, or the grand statue of Christ the Redeemer embracing Rio de Janeiro?

It’s amazing to think that a single building can define a city, even a nation. The form and design can define a culture. People in the remotest parts of the planet know America by her White House. The world grieved with the French when fire destroyed centuries of history held in the roof of the Notre Dame.

Our buildings become monuments of permanence, solidity; or, as if chisel into stone, a legacy of our history. Perhaps that is why we struggle to tear even the most temporary structures down.

Life in the Bubble

After the global destruction of World War I, a young aspiring architect wanted to make his mark on the world. Wallace Neff wanted to create buildings that radiated innovation and durability. For years he studied shells along the West Coast and marveled at how they endured the relentless pressure and immense forces of nature working against them.

Thanks to the revival of Spanish colonial architecture in Southern California he rose to prominence, becoming the architect for Hollywood stars. That wealth and affluence gave him space to pursue his passion: bubbles. He developed and patented, according to Jeffrey Head, “a new type of construction in which a rubber-coated fabric balloon [was] blown up and then sprayed with concrete or plastic.”

Neff dreamed that his Bubble Houses would take the world by storm. In the early 1940s each bubble only cost $200 and 18 hours to build (still only $2000 today)! He saw those durable pod shells as his life’s legacy. In 1942 the first twelve bubble houses were built in Falls Church, Virginia, and before long Neff and his team were expanding all over America and the world.

So imagine my surprise when I discovered that between 1948 and 1953 there were 1200 bubble houses built on the plateau of Dakar! How was it that I’d lived in Senegal for 6 years and never seen one of Neff’s innovative domed marvels?! Where were these space age defining constructions? Searching old city plans and modern aerial views of the city I finally found what looked like domes. I jumped in the car and drove over to find them. Today only a handful remain, and most of them have been deformed over time with adaptive construction.

The innovations of the past couldn’t stand up to the impact of urban sprawl. Neff’s bubble houses sadly proved inefficient for Dakar’s ever increasing dense population.

Domes of Impact

Looking at these aged innovations, these ineffective concrete dreams, began a new prayer conversation in my heart. Neff wanted to leave a legacy. Who doesn’t? We use terms like ‘impact’ and ‘influence’ to encapsulate our dreams. We want to take an active role in our ministries and how God’s kingdom comes and His will is done. This is well intentioned but should give us pause.

“Evangelical Christians love using the word ‘impact,’ writes Timothy Gombis. “While this is understandable, it is actually a pretty forceful… understanding of ministry. The term impact has to do with forcefully coming into contact with something, which is a pretty violent understanding of how pastors relate to their churches and how churches relate to the world.”

Gombis goes on to explore the missionary ministry of the Apostle Paul who, although we often imagine him as the poster child of activity, instead took a more passive role in deference to what God was doing in the Church. “Paul does not seek to impact his churches, nor even to influence them… In Paul’s view, God is the active agent who builds, grows, and shapes the church. Paul is deferential to God’s intentions and plans so that he sees himself as being at God’s disposal to do with him as God sees fit.”


Forward in a Fog

All of this reminds me how in 2009, as Elise and I were preparing to follow Jesus into the deserts of Northeastern Africa, God led my heart to Exodus 13 and 14. Moses and the people of Israel were on the banks of the Red Sea. They were moving toward God’s vision for their future while their past was dangerously close behind. Over our blessed years in Africa it has often felt that we have been journeying through the desert, blindly trusting the Lord is going before us, like He did at the Red Sea.

Only recently have I begun to see how immense that image really is. The people of God, newly freed from slavery, are following God in fog and fire! Passing through the Red Sea they were surrounded by a fog. Walls of water and a pillar of cloud towered over them while the crashing of Egyptian wheels echoed behind them, pushing them forward.

For forty years the manifest presence of God’s Spirit always went before them, leading them toward the future (Exodus 40.38). How many times did the people tire of the journey, the frustrations of their never-ending pilgrimage? How often were they tempted to breakaway from the pack when the fog began to move?

Surely, they must have thought, “God just made this water sweet. We should stay here!”

“God just provided manna in this valley. Will it be there tomorrow if we move?”

“We finally have water again, bursting forth from this rock. The Lord is at work here. We should stay here.”

Sadly, the people often did resist the movement of the Spirit. They started to set down roots or longed for the rose-colored experiences of the past. They could have chosen to stay at Sinai or be satisfied in Succoth. They could have settled for the innovations of yesterday while God led them again into fog of the unknown that required trust but promised His presence.

If the Spirit moves, should we stay? If the cloud of God’s presence is moving shouldn’t we move with it? Answering these questions may come quickly, but when we become comfortable in our rhythms and content with our patterns, our actions may belie our ready responses. We love that style of worship. We prefer that communication method. (What was wrong with 8-tracks anyway!?) Too often we stay when the Spirit is already on the move.


Bursting the Bubble

There was a time for God’s people to be in Egypt. There was an era for Neff’s bubble houses. There was even a blessed season for them to stay at the foot of Sinai. But the day came when they had to leave Egypt. The day came when Neff’s bubble burst. There even came a day when the Spirit of God left Mount Sinai (Numbers 10.11-12).

We all want legacy and longevity, but what if God is calling us to follow Him into the unknown? Give up trying to define the landscape of your city in your strength. Redefine your life in Christ. Obedience is better than permanence. Follow the Spirit.

We all want to impact the world and influence others, but what if Jesus is calling us to surrender “our” control over “our” ministry, reevaluate yesterday’s innovations and trust in His path and plan. Let the Bubble House burst. Make space for new. Follow the Spirit.

It can be scary to follow the fog of His presence away from Mount Sinai, believing He is doing a new thing (Isaiah 32.19). Follow the Spirit. He made a way through the Red Sea. Now look, He will make a way through the desert. There we will wrestle with your fears in the darkness. We will be like Jacob wrestling with angels and discovering the greater things God has for us down the road, further ahead, beyond our sight (Genesis 32.22-32).

Let us tear down our temporary structures as we fix our eyes on Christ the Redeemer. No architect can rival what He is building, a city radiant with the glory of God (Revelation 21). Jesus has prepared a place for us and His Spirit is leading us there (John 14.3). Follow the Spirit.

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Additional B&W Photographs by Steve Roden and Wallace Neff in 1953.

the rock and sophocles

Life’s too short.

This last month has been a rollercoaster of emotions. Early one morning I received a phone call from my father. He told me that my mother’s recent routine surgical procedure had gone wrong. She was back in the hospital, waiting for a second surgery, more invasive, more corrective, and surely (although he didn’t say it) more dangerous.

It’s amazing how we as father’s intuitively downplay our own concerns for our children. Its a strength we don’t always recognize as children. I watched my father as he told me Mom was going to be fine and the doctors felt confident they would be able to repair the damage. I in turn gave the same brave face to my children when I told them about their grandmother’s surgery. I saw in their faces the same concern and worry and fear.

Five days later Mom was out of the hospital, back home and resting. My prayers breathed a sigh of relief, but the air was pregnant with an electricity I didn’t want to miss as life went back to normal. All the mundane tasks were calling me back for full attention, instead of the half-heart focus I’d given them the past few weeks; all those things that once seemed so important until something truly meaningful called for my attention.

Life is too short. The months, weeks and days from cradle to grave are summed up in a small dash between dates. How many stone markers and wooden crosses are there that sum up the highs and lows, triumphs and tragedies and everything in between with a short line. Life stories swallowed up in a linear void. And how many of those dashes are too short for cause of human striving?

Each person will have a different response to these life moments, these times that bring definition in the blur. Some will be crushed by the weight of painful possibilities. Others will bury themselves more deeply in distraction, work or play, to keep their minds occupied. Ultimately, like Jacob, they will all come to the same place where they must wrestle out the meaning of life and purpose (Genesis 32).

Wrestling Out Purpose
Jacob had worked hard. He’d carved out a wealth of his own, a life made up of success in the face of corruption, a nuclear family of his own filled with children. Finally, Jacob was able to shake free from his father-in-law, and set out to define his own life apart from Laban’s tricks.

But the farther from Laban he went the closer to Esau he got. Unresolved fear began to mount as he remembered how things were left with his brother. Jacob was distressed. Every dune they crossed and every wadi they passed brought them closer to Canaan and possible disaster. The days slowed to hours under the hot traveler’s sun.

Everything that Jacob had put his life into, all his hard work could go up in smoke. Not only that, but the people he loved the most were in danger. There on the banks of the Jabbok, God met with Jacob.

How often we sugar coat our encounters with God. We look for the transfigurations, the visions of God’s divine glory, while God is ready to meet us in our pain, in the darkest places in our soul. We’re so busy looking for rainbows we don’t see the body slam he’s bringing. We’re so hungry for our own success we can’t even smell what the Rock is cooking. All we want is a blessing but God wants to transform us.

All his life Jacob has been wrestling with everybody (Esau, Isaac, and Laban), trying to squeeze out meaning and purpose, against others. Jacob was living out the meaning of his name, grabbing at God’s heels, demanding a blessing for his benefit, a prize for his purpose. What more could we ask for?

The Tyranny of Self
Like Jacob we strive and struggle against one another, elevating our needs above all others. And this seems only right as we are uniquely aware of our needs. As altruistic as Jacob was in fearing for his family, giving his best efforts to protect them against Esau, he was still allowing a dangerous humanistic mindset to determine his behavior and rewrite his purpose.

In this current climate it seems appropriate to remember the Greek classics Sophocles deftly translated by Seamus Heaney: wrote “all of us would like to have been born infallible, but since we know we weren’t, it’s better to attend to those who speak in honesty and good faith, and learn from them.”

As wise as these words are they lift our eyes no higher than to other fallible people. It is a dangerous time when we put our hopes and dreams of a world renewed and a life transformed in the small hands of men and women. Whether we call it tribalism, xenophobia or a host of other names, the elevation of ‘me' and ‘mine’ will never produce the lasting purpose we want to define our lives. At best we can hope to become little dictators of our own individual democracies where our word is law and our rule irrefutable.

A Life of Pregnant Time
But life’s too short for that. Our lives have been built for too much meaning and beauty to be squandered on our vanities. Our lives are pregnant with purpose if we can only stop wrestling with one another and start wrestling with God.

When we stop fighting other image bearers and turn our eyes toward Jesus we find ourselves with a new name in a renewed purpose. No setbacks or struggles can overcome us. In Jesus, we shift from a life of clock-watching and score-keeping to a life of intentional worship.

Consider the life of Paul. Paul’s purpose and meaning were all bound up in a pregnant approach to life. Repeatedly Paul called for God’s people to shift their thinking, to change their focus, to rewrite their mindsets. Paul encouraged the Galatians to re-orient their lives toward Christ, watching for the rich opportunities to serve and bless others (Galatians 6.10). He challenged the Ephesians to redeem the time in the face of evil (Ephesians 5:16).

Our lives as Jesus’ people should be marked by a belief that any time we are wrestling out the purpose of God for our lives are moments pregnant with possibility. Paul calls us from our common complacency to walk in wisdom. As we walk before a corrupt world, redeeming the time as we graciously share the good news of Jesus Christ (Colossians 4.5-6).

In the end, life’s too short to spend it fighting the wrong battles and skirmishing on the wrong shores. In the coming days, let’s climb out of the trenches, season our language with salt, and love others as we fix our eyes on Jesus. Life’s too short to wrestle with anyone but God.